Selkie338

When I worked at a cable company tech support center, I had a customer once who, when I called him Mister Jones (not his real name, don't even remember the real name) he got severely indignant and demanded I call him Doctor Jones. It always struck me as a really egotistical and conceited thing to do to a complete stranger. That experience is a small part of where Professor Trunchbull comes from.

Gendou Ikari isn’t the worst father ever. Technically, according to the mythos of his universe, he (usually) did the right thing.

Now if Gendou had been wrong about the nature of the NGE universe and all the pseudo-Gnostic mystical evolutionist version of Shintoism nonsense that the creators of the series had made up as they went along, he would be an asshole. But give the guy some credit: when everyone’s a tiny piece of “God” and you’re not just one of the very few pieces who realize it, but you personally have the best understanding of a plan to put all the pieces back together (even more so than your arrogant bosses), that justifies some very asshole-like behavior.

Plus, if you take away the Human Instrumentality thing, and the clones, and all the mystical sci fi stuff and just look at his relationship with his family, Gendou’s attitude isn’t as bad as some people I know in real life. At least he’s involving his son in his work instead of tossing him aside. At least he still cares for Rei (in a seriously twisted way, but again that’s at least partly because she’s directly tied to the twisted-up mythos). At least he actually cares about understanding the truth of the world rather than believing what is convenient for him. At least he is concerned about doing what is morally right according to that truth. At least he is willing to try and fix familial problems he causes instead of trying to abandon responsibility. At least he is involving his son in his work. At least he is trying to make his son a stronger and more capable person instead of seeing him as just another disposable pawn.

Oh, I said “At least he is involving his son in his work.” twice. What I meant was both that he was involving his son in his work in a mundane way, as regular fathers do, and also despite the fact that his work is the most important thing happening in that universe (according to the screwed-up mythos), he still values his son enough to involve him, so he actually cares for Shinji about as much as “saving” the world.

I still remember the first time I watched Fullmetal Alchemist (the first series) and got to…. THAT scene. I think “bone-deep horror” is a pretty good descriptor. Wasn’t as powerful in Brotherhood to me, maybe because I knew it was coming or maybe because the first few episodes of Brotherhood feel… rushed to me, like they were powering through the content the first series already covered as quickly as possible.

You know. I’ve watched some horrible animes. Characters that in real life would have been executed in public in France for crimes against humanity. And I always watched with a detached sort of enjoyment because it’s just a show. When I saw that scene with Shou Tucker, I wanted more than anything for him to walk out of the screen so I could destroy him with my bare hands. A very very difficult thing to witness.

It was almost certainly earlier than in the original anime, because it’s set really early in the manga (the first couple chapters of Volume 2, I want to say,) and I think they set it later in the 2003 one. Haven’t seen enough of either to be able to compare off the top of my head, but when I read it… yeah.

And that “better not”, while I wish it could simply have been a responsible parenting response of “he’ll be in trouble”, coupled with the actions and words of Truck, makes me cringe at the thought of what kind of punishment the doctor has in mind.

Have fun denying it with Selkie shaken, coughing, and probably with bruises where he grabbed her, honestly. I’ve had that done to me, and the upper parts of my arms where I was grabbed and shaken were purple.

“Mr. Trunchbull, you have two seconds to avoid the massive firestorm that will erupt when Selkie or Todd blurts out just what exactly was going on here.” “PROFESSOR Trunchbull!” “Sorry, Mr. Trunchbull, your time is up.” FWACKOOM

I’m thinking two things here.
1. The Trunchbulls are the type of parents who have a kid who “never” does anything wrong, at least in front of them. The perfect little angel when parents are around, but a rotten little hellion when they’re not.
Or, it’s a case of “you won’t do anything wrong while we’re around..if you know what’s good for you…”

Hmmmm… Yes… “He had BETTER not have hit a girl.” So far, so good: definitely able to accept the remote possibility of their offspring possibly doing wrong.

But I’ve seen this before. That purely rational theoretical possibility might not ever actually happen. Because if you collapse the quantum waveform by putting their kid in front of them, who is crying about a mean little creepy girl kicking him in the junk for no reason; this won’t be that possible time. Let’s not forget: this is what Truck actually thinks. Just because he’s not telling the objective truth, that doesn’t mean he’s lying. In fact, Truck probably won’t even try to deceive them! They probably can tell when he’s trying to deceive them, so he’ll tell them exactly what he thinks happened! And because he’s not lying, they’re going to take his side.

That mythical, fantastical time when their offspring might do wrong because, after all no one is perfect, will never ever actually come. Because while the possibility may exist that it is not the other person’s fault, that, obviously not the case in this instance. After all their son is not trying to deceive them: therefore the other kid must be lying.

“This is what Truck actually thinks. Just because he’s not telling the objective truth, that doesn’t mean he’s lying.”

It does, actually. If he doesn’t understand the objective form of it, he’s delusional, and delusions are falsehoods that mislead, thus speaking to delusions is, in fact, lying, though he might not be doing it intentionally…

It’s useful to restrict the use of the word ‘lying’ to cases of conscious and intentional untruthfulness. If you don’t apply that limitation, it becomes absurd to think that there’s anything morally wrong about lying.

Also, it’s rather extreme to call anyone who is ever mistaken about a question of fact delusional. You can’t label an error a delusion unless the person is irrationally clinging to a mistaken belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Truck may indeed turn out to be delusional, but we don’t have any proof so far that he is — only that in a stress situation he is really slow to process new information that doesn’t fit with his existing perceptions. I initially thought that might be because he wasn’t very smart, and that could still turn out to be the explanation. However, now that we’ve seen his parents, it may be that he has been given very little opportunity — or incentive — to learn that skill. His mother, now, is definitely delusional: she thinks her Tommy could never do anything wrong. It sounds like his father is excessively punitive, which only teaches a child that you must never, ever, admit even to yourself that you could have been in the wrong.

Hmmm – it could only get more coincidental if the “Professor’s” specialty field happened to be Selkie’s species, and as the story unfolds he asks her what the heck she was doing out in the snow in the first place. In her native language. XD It should make Todd’s architectural review with his clients interesting.

I’m going to bet it’s both. Mommy’s Little Darling never does anything wrong… but if he does, Stern Father Dearest completely loses his cool and overreacts to the point where nothing in the area is left standing (including people who Didn’t Stop The Boy In His Folly), and Mommy Squishyhugs doubles down on making sure that Mommy’s Little Darling NEVER DOES ANYTHING WRONG, EVER, YOU MUST HAVE HAD SOMETHING IN YOUR EYES YOU NEVER SAW IT IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

Interesting…. Todd has a tough dilemma…. Does he…
1- inform the parents that YES, their son attacked a girl, HIS daughter
or
2- protect Truck from the fairly obvious consequences (and violent) of his father finding out what he did…..

Anyone who says the mom is in the wrong here is ridiculous. Yeah sure, she may think her little darling can do no wrong, but would YOU? Seriously, would any of you think your precious little angel would be capable? Half of you would insist it was the school being unjust and the rest of you would assume it was your child who was in the right and the other child in the wrong.

So don’t pass judgement on a parent when you yourself would hardly act any different.

So I can pass judgement? When my little one does something wrong, anything wrong my technique is to sit down, calm her down and then after she can speak reasonably, have her tell me what’s wrong. Then I tell her what she did wrong and ask her what she plans on doing to make it right. Then make her follow through with it. And if she’s innocent, I tell her what was so wrong that happened to her and that we should make sure she never does it.

When you react like this and the other parents are jumping around screaming that their child could never ever do something bad, it makes impossible to actually fix the problem!

The kids (and sometimes the teachers) just hear that one kid is being defended by their parents and one isn’t. Jumping to the defensive or jumping to conclusions just makes the problem worse. I’m hoping that because Prof. Trunchbull is allowing for the possibility that his son screwed up, maybe Mrs. Trunchbull will pull herself together soon.

I feel that by insisting people call him “Professor” Trunchbull, Mr. Trunchbull is probably clinging to a sense of entitlement that he feels gives him the respect and renown he felt he deserved for so long, probably something he never received from his family or from others he sought it from. In turn he’s setting these ridiculous standards and rules for his son, and in that turn Tommy’s setting these same standards for those he considers below him so that he may also feel some form of power and not feel entirely helpless in life. It’s all just a big probability, some guessing and whatnot, but if that’s how it is then it’s just a sad, sad cycle that needs breaking.

I worked at a call center taking orders for products and one of our clients was a Doctor with a serious arrogance problem. He didn’t just expect people to call him Doctor, he instructed them in the inflections they were to take when addressing him. Yes, he told people what tone of voice they were to address him in.

On my last day he called in and started lecturing me. I just quacked at the end of every sentence at him.

After this and the last update I’m almost hoping that the Trunchbulls end up being the reasonable & responsible people here and Todd is the “ogre” here.

I’ve watched parents I expected to be reasonable and rational switch to completely irrational and angry denial when their child was caught or punished for bullying and fighting. They refused to believe any hint that their child might have been mean to someone/started a fight/broken someone’s toy on purpose or even broken it by accident.

I’ve also watched parents I thought were excessively infatuated and in denial about their child’s bad behavior treat the same situation with unexpected level headed fairness. They surprised me with trying to teach their child how to show genuine remorse, how to make amends, and made their child’s punishment an opportunity to show their kid how to make a situation right after screwing up without ever trivializing the bad behavior.

So.. Yeah, I’m kinda hoping the resolution/next step to this arc gives the Trunchbulls a little more dimension, and not just because I’d love to see how the principal reacts to that.